In the beginning of 2018 Tekes and Finpro were merged to form Business Finland. Together with Skog Helsinki we were assigned to design the customer service process for the new organisation. To ensure an optimal experience for the end-customers we needed to use both internal and customer expectations as guiding principles for our work.

CLIENT:

IN CO-OPERATION WITH:

APPROACH:

First we focused on understanding the current state of the customer process. We wanted to map both the customer and personnel point of view to discover both similarities and divergences. We interviewed key people representing as different job descriptions and focus areas we could find.

After compiling the insights from our interviews we held workshops with both current and potential Business Finland customers. The goal was to map out the ideal service process from the customer point of view.

We also held internal workshops with Business Finland personnel with the aim to understand challenges and possibilities related to the current state. We also wanted to make sure we would get the planning of the new process kicked off to ensure things keep moving on.

SOLUTION

We quickly understood that the most important role of Business Finland is to facilitate and support their customers' business processes in a value-creating way so the customers can focus on the essential. To ensure the process would meet the customer need we formed four guiding principles for all customer-facing activities:

The new customer service process is based on effectively identifying the most promising customers and catering to their needs. More expectations are placed on new applicants and many of the first phase activities are digitalised and placed in a self-help service. This frees time for the customer service personnel to guide more customers on a daily basis.

Customers showing most potential reach a so called Account phase. This is the starting point of a potentially longterm customer relationship in which Business Finland services are tailored into solutions including e.g. R&D funding, growth programs and other theme-based services, long-term advice on internationalisation, support by global network in external consulting projects.

Much of our project was not only designing a new process but also figuring out how two different companies with different backgrounds and ways of working should be merged. The future way of working could not only rely on conventional strategic and tactical plans. Focus needed to be on making sure the two combining company cultures, values, people and behaviours were taken into consideration.

OUTCOMES

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

By automating the process of onboarding new clients we freed valuable time from customer support to reduce pain points of customers in need. Success for the most potential clients should be the measure of success for Business Finland.

PRACTICE OVER THEORY

Working with both internal personnel and clients we were able to identify small actions that can lead to big shift. We created an array of clean-cut practical steps to be tested and iterated on the field.

STRONGER TOGETHER

We helped Business Finland advance towards a common purpose that unifies employees and aligns their ways of working with the corporate strategy. Focus was on making sure the two combining company cultures, values, people and behaviours were taken into consideration.

“The design team did an excellent job on this project! The team grasped a very complex subject and produced a clear and precise proposal for us to make use of.”